Bari Weiss has published another opinion piece in the New York Times about frightful anti-Semitism: “Europe’s Jew Hatred, and Ours.” There is no comment section. What a shock. She gets to trash the pro-Palestinian movement as vicious anti-Semites and we don’t get to call her out for her contempt for Palestinian rights.
Weiss asserts that the three heads of the “dragon” of anti-Semitism are white nationalists, Islamists and leftwing anti-Semites who masquerade as anti-Zionists. As if leftwingers who support Palestinian human rights are just as dangerous as neo-Nazis who kill Jews.
Here are her many jabs at those who defend Palestinian rights, as heirs to Nazis:
Just 54 percent [of Europeans in a CNN poll] say Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state.
It’s no wonder that to be a Jew in Europe today is to live your life in the closet…
Now add a third ingredient to this toxic brew: the fashionable anti-Semitism of the far left that masquerades as anti-Zionism and anti-racism.
No political leader in Europe embodies that sentiment more than Britain’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn….
[F]or Mr. Corbyn and his ilk on the left, Israel, the Jew among the nations, is the last bastion of white, racist colonialism…
Finally there is the hatred from the left, which comes cloaked in the language of progressive values…
[W]e are often dismissed as sensitive or hysterical, or as mistaking legitimate criticism of Israel for something darker.
This is nonsense. The same was said of the Jews in Europe when they sounded the alarm bells. Look where they are now.
So once again Weiss equates Jewishness and Zionism. To be Jewish means to support Israel, “the Jew among nations.” As Weiss told a NY temple audience in the wake of Pittsburgh massacre, at the temple where she was bat mitzvah’d, the Jews of Israel and the U.S. are one:
“Our [Jewish] values are also the fact that we are alive for the Jewish return to political sovereignty [in Israel]– the idea that we would celebrate that! … we are all one, Am Yisrael [the people of Israel].”
No doubt Corbyn has stumbled into associating with some jerks–you can’t avoid it if you discuss the Palestinian issue. But Bari Weiss’s side is full of intolerant jerks, including four New York Times column writers who have justified the massacre of unarmed Palestinian protesters at the Gaza fence:
Tom Friedman blamed Hamas for “the tragic and wasted deaths of roughly 60 Gazans by encouraging their march.”
Bret Stephens said Gaza was a “military quagmire,” as if Palestinians are armed, and responsible for the violence. “No decent Palestinian society can emerge from the culture of victimhood, violence and fatalism symbolized by these protests.”
Shmuel Rosner was unapologetic, Israel had to be cruel to be kind: “Sometimes there is no better choice than being clear, than being firm, than drawing a line that cannot be crossed by those wanting to harm you.”
Matti Friedman doesn’t quite defend the shootings, but in essence he does. Israel had no good choices, they had to shoot or face something worse– if the fence was breached, “the death toll will be far higher.” Because Palestinians “have the stated goal of erasing the border as a step toward erasing Israel.” So– no blame attached to Israel at all.
And Bari Weiss herself has labeled Linda Sarsour an anti-Semite because she doesn’t approve of Zionism. A Palestinian is supposed to approve of Zionism.
Meanwhile, the US is all set to borrow at interest (from China I suspect) a $38 billion military aid package to gift to Israel. The cherry atop is that the US also pays interest to Israel on this gift to Israel. Rand Paul has been the lone dissenter in the Senate. Trump will breezily sign off, even as he’s shouting to cut $30 billion from the latest US defense budget.
PHIL/DONALD- “So once again Weiss equates Jewishness and Zionism.”
Zionism simply cannot be understood without reference to the Holocaust and its impact upon the perception of anti-Semitism and Jewishness. Yet, it is a topic Mondoweiss officially discourages in the comments section. Perhaps you should reconsider.
“…a significant part of the community wants to talk about Israeli policy in the context of Jewish history and Jewish identity, and do so in a highly critical manner….We don’t.” https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2012/10/changes-to-the-mondoweiss-comment-policy/
“Bari Weiss’s piece in NYT … allows no comments”.
My comments are often not published by Mondo.
This very typical for the “progressive” journalism. When you can’t beat the argument, you just no publish it.
israel is the only democracy in the middle east, and the only democracy in the world to hear the word ‘equality’ and feel existentially threatened.
“The same was said of the Jews in Europe when they sounded the alarm bells. Look where they are now.”
The current Jews of Europe are now in their European homelands. Many of them hold high positions in government, in business and the legal profession, in medicine and media and academia and the arts. Many others have less exalted positions. Pretty much like non-Jewish Europeans. Is that what she wants us to look at?